Once Upon a Time in Lagos: Episode 12

 

I remembered an old scout in Baltimore, who had done many strange work in his day, once telling me that the secret of playing a part was to think yourself into it. You will never succeed in impersonating another person, he said, unless you could manage to convince yourself that you were that person. So, following his advise, I shut off all other thoughts and switched them on to the road-mending. I thought of Mr. Emmanuel’s house down the road as my home, I recalled the years I had spent running a store and a bar at Ewu-Oluwo, I made myself dwell lovingly on sleep in his bed and of a bottle of cheap gin. Still nothing appeared on that village road – not even a bicycle.

 

Sometimes I passed some villagers on my way to or from the pond. I also saw some teenagers washing clothes at the stream. Other than that, the neighborhood was quiet. After the teenagers left, I saw an African fish eagle flopped down to a pool in the pond and started the fish, ignoring my presence completely – to it I might as well be a milestone. On I went, moving my loads of fractured stone, sand and fine soil particles, with the heavy step of a professional construction worker. And since this is Nigeria, the weather was hot, though I didn’t feel it that much due to a low humidity. By this time the dust on my face changed into solid and abiding grit. I was already counting the hours till evening should put a limit to Mr. Emmanuel’s monotonous toil. Suddenly a sharp voice spoke from the road, and looking up I saw a red Volkswagen, and a young man in a dashiki.

 

“Are you Emmanuel Obaseki,” he asked. “I am the new road supervisor. You live here and have charge of the road section from here to Ogijo?”

I told him that he’s correct.

“Great!,” he said. “A fair bit of road, Emmanuel, and badly maintained. Well, it was a little bad about a mile off, and its edges need some work no doubt. You take care of those, and,  I visit you  another time.”

 

That was it! Clearly my responses and interaction was good enough for the dreaded road supervisor. I went on with my work, and as the morning began to change to noon I was cheered by a little traffic. A bread seller, who was carrying his wares in a box attached to the top of the front tires of his bicycle passed through the road and sold me a loaf of bread, which I placed beside the road, just in case I got hungry again. Then two young boys shepherding a small collection of goats passed, and startled me somewhat by asking loudly, “What had become of Googled Emma?”

 

“He went back to bed,” I replied.

“What, this early?” one of them said.

“Yes,” I again replied. “He was having a headache.”

 

They passed on with their herd of goats.  A few hours later, at around 12 noon, a red-colored Datsun Bluebird station wagon drove down the hill, glided past  and stopped about a hundred yards away from me. It had three men sitting inside and they came out as if to stretch their legs, and then started moving towards me. I immediately noticed that I had seen two of the men before from the window of the Village Breeze Guest House. I haven’t seen the third man before, but he had the look of villager, perhaps the village storekeeper. He was dressed in a washed out blue jean trouser and a white shirt.

 

“Good morning to you,” he said. “You are doing a good job.”

 

I didn’t look up as they approached me, and now that they started talking to me, I slowly and painfully straightened my back, just like the construction workers doing roadwork does.  I also spat frequently like they normally do and then looked at them for a while before replying. I was looking at three pairs of eyes that missed nothing.

 

Trying very hard to hide my foreign accent, I said to them in Pidgin English, “Thanks, but I hate the job. If I have the choice I’d rather have your type of job, driving around in a car. It’s you guys that mess up our roads with your cars.”

 

The man wearing the blue jean trouser and a white shirt was looking at the newspaper showing from Emmanuel’s plastic bag.

 

“You reading this?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied in Pidgin English. “It’s my good companion here.”

“May I?” he said, pointing at the paper.

“You go ahead,” I said.

 

He picked it up, glanced at it casually, and then put it down. One of the other two men whom I had earlier seen at the Village Breeze Guest House had been looking at my booths, and a word in Yoruba called their attention to them.

 

“For a construction worker I would say you have a good taste in boots,” the man in blue jean trouser and a white shirt said. “I’ve never seen this kind of boot around this area before.”

“It was a gift from a rich friend, sir,” I said.

Again one of the men I earlier saw at the Village Breeze Guest House spoke in Yoruba.

“Come on, guys,” he said. “Let’s move on. He’s not our man.”

Before they left, they asked one last question.

“Do you see any young man pass here early this morning? He might be on foot or he might be on a Phoenix bicycle?”

It was a trap, and I almost fell into it by making up a story about a cyclist hurrying past earlier in the morning. But I was smart enough to pretend to think very deeply.

“I woke up late today,” I said. “The truth is that my daughter was married last night and, because of the celebration with family, in-laws and friends, I had went to bed very late. When I woke up this morning to begin my work, I have only seen two young boys shepherding a small collection of goats and you guys. This village is usually very quiet by this time of the year.”

One of them gave me a stick of cigarette. Thanking him, I stuck it in Emmanuel Obaseki’s small plastic bag. They got into their Datsun Bluebird station wagon and drove away.

After they left, I released a sigh of relief. And I continued working for about ten minutes, which was good for the car returned for some reason that I could not understand. It is very obvious that these men don’t leave nothing to chance. One of them waved at me as they finally drove away.

I finished Emmanuel Obaseki’s lunch, and I continued  working on the road. I was confused about what to do next. The truth was that I can’t be working on this road for a long time. I had to do something now, for time is not really on my side. I was glad that God had kept Mr. Emmanuel Obaseki asleep indoors, but if he appeared on the scene there would be trouble. I was very sure that the cordon was still tight around my surrounding areas, and that if I walked in any direction I might fall into my enemies’ trap. In spite of that, I knew that I must leave, now. I have never met any man whose nerves could stand more than a day of being spied on in all my life.

I decided to work for a little while before returning my tools to  Mr. Emmanuel Obaseki’s tools to his hours later on. By now it was almost 5 o’clock in the evening. I had planned to take my chance of getting over the forests and small hills in the darkness after returning the tools to him. But suddenly a new car came up the road. It was a black Mercedes Benz and it slowed down a yard or two from me. One man was sitting behind the wheel and he wanted to light a cigarette. I took a good look at him and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was Deji Kolawole! What the hell is he doing here? Perhaps this was his village, I thought. But then, that doesn’t matter now. Deji Kolawole was a bad news to any young woman, including the married women. I’ve met him in Lagos. He was a spoiled brat of Lagos Police Commissioner and they lived in my neighborhood in Victoria Island. And he generally do what a rich spoiled kid does, especially when their parents had the power and connections: he partied, made lots of friends, slept with almost all the young ladies in my neighborhoods, drove around in his father’s Mercedes and experimented with alcohol and marijuana. He was really having a blast at the time, and rumors had it that he was also sleeping with married women at the time. There were lots of young girls with broken hearts in Victoria Island because of Deji.

Anyway, there he was now, well dressed, in his father’s Mercedes Benz, obviously on his way to visit one of his girlfriends. I made a quick decision, and in a second I had opened his passenger’s door, jumped into his car and had him by the shoulder.

“Hello, Deji,” I said. “What a surprise to see you in this part of the country.”

He stiffened with fear and his chin dropped as he stared at me. “Who are you?” he said in a faint voice.

“My name’s Jideofor Okorie,” I said. “From Victoria Island, remember?”

“Oh my God!,” he shouted in Yoruba. “You are the murderer!”

“Well said,” I snarled. “And there will be another murder right now if you don’t follow my orders!”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Excellent,” I replied. “I need your jacket and your hat. Hurry up!”

He did exactly what I said and within a minute the dusty construction worker was transformed into the neatest motorist in the village. I turned his car around and headed back to the road he had come. I knew that my pursuers, having seen his car before, would probably let it pass without any suspicion. Besides, Deji’s figure and appearance was in no way like mine.

“Now, listen very carefully my good friend,” I warned. “I have no beef with you. Just behave yourself and you won’t get hurt. I am only borrowing your car for a few hours, so don’t try to be a hero. If you open your mouth to alert anyone, or if you try to play any trick with me, I will break your neck. Understand?”

“Yes, boss!” he said.

Overall, I enjoyed my ride with him that evening. We drove about seven miles down the valley, through a village or two, and I actually saw some men loitering by the roadside. I was convinced that these were men who would have stopped me or alerted the police if they had seen me. But instead, they were admiring the car as we drove pass them, and one of them even waved at me in salute, and I waved back at him.

Soon it was getting dark, and I turned the car to a road that led into what I believed was an unfrequented corner of the hills. As I continued to drive, we left the villages and farms behind. We came to a large area that was covered with shrubs and a few trees, where the night was blackening the sunset gleam in a nearby stream. Here we stopped and I gave back the jacket, hat and the car to Deji.

“Thanks a lot, my good friend,” I said. “You are more useful than thought. Now, get lost before I lose my temper!”

I sat on the hillside and watched him drove away. As I was doing that, I pondered on the various crimes I had now committed. I am not a murderer, in spite of what the police might be saying about me. But I had become a stupid impostor, a liar, and a car thief. The thought of these made me even more worried about my life.

 

  

END OF EPISODE 12

P.S. Stay tuned for Episode 13, which  will be published here next Sunday.